Inventor and architect of the Jugantar movement, Jatindranath Mukherjee (1879-1915) was popular as Bagha Jatin. Behind the minimalist image of a champion of physical strength, he was esteemed – by those who knew him – for his thirst for justice, his vision of an India politically free, socially modern and spiritually progressive.

Believing in the enemy’s enemy as a practical philosophy, he negotiated with the German Crown Prince the delivery of arms for an insurrection; the Berlin committee Signed a ttreaty with the Kaiser’s ministers in favour of creating a socialist government in India. Preceding Gandhiji, Jatindranath prepared the field for a mass movement, supplying arms – both moral and military – to an unarmed people half asleep under chronic bondage.